


Under the Red Hood

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7751083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce at Jason's grave</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Red Hood

Grave robbers. It must have been grave robbers because that was the only thing that made sense. Bruce had a theory by the time he hit the cemetery, and by the time he finished digging, he was almost sure. Someone stole Jason’s body. It must have happened.

It was the knife that clued him in— a replica of Ra’s al Ghul’s, clearly denoting League involvement. The odds that Ra’s would allow someone else to use his Lazarus Pit were low, but it was still the most likely option. What else had the power to bring a person back to life? The image made Bruce sick.

Until he saw the coffin, he was almost sure.

There hadn’t been any grave robbers. Bruce could see that, looking down at the splintered wood— why would robbers splinter the wood? The pattern was wrong, the top broken up instead of down, and when he opened the lid…

Empty. He’d expected that. He hadn’t expected the inside to be torn open, buckled, spattered with blood. Corpses didn’t _bleed_. Bruce stepped away from the hole in the ground, frantically trying to pull away from the one fact every bit of evidence was telling him.

There hadn’t been a break-in. Jason had broken out. Jason had been alive, clearly desperate, inside that coffin, fighting to escape.

That wasn’t…. that wasn’t right. For a few seconds, Bruce grappled with the logistics of the thing, because a body didn’t come back to life inside a tomb, it didn’t, it couldn’t. Maybe— no that wasn’t possible— Jason had been alive the entire time, but he hadn’t, Bruce knew that, he _remembered_. He stumbled back against the headstone, feeling the familiar weight of guilt pressing into his chest. Jason died. Bruce couldn’t figure the rest, but that didn’t matter.

The breaks in the wood were years old. Jason was alive. Jason had been alive, maybe the entire time, and Bruce hadn’t known. How could he not have known? How could he not have seen a disturbance that would have been obvious weeks, maybe months after the fact? If he had visited more often—

Bruce stood motionless in the upturned earth, breathing sharp, shallow breaths. Jason. Jason Jason Jason Jason Jason Jason— Jason scared and screaming and alone. He imagined the first scene of every horror movie: a graveyard in the rain, a hand reaching out of the ground, but Jason’s hand— scarred knuckles and bitten-off nails. Bruce pushed the image away.

He’d been visiting an empty grave. He’d been standing on a splintered coffin, thinking about a martyred child. Bruce remembered the years of it, coming to punish himself, to stand there and _feel_ it the way he deserved to feel, and then… and then less. It never stopped hurting, but the last few years…

He’d left Jason behind. Before God and His throne, he hadn’t meant to, but he had. He’d let himself move on. He wasn’t happy exactly, but happier, and that was a betrayal.

The older, angry Jason on the rooftops was hard to reconcile with Bruce’s tiny, smiling son, but looking at the empty coffin, Bruce understood. He hadn’t just let Jason die. He’d abandoned him to living, to crawling out of the dirt and into whatever hell had taken him afterwards. That was unforgivable. No wonder Jason hated him. He hated himself.

If he had known… if he had known Jason was alive, he would have moved mountains to find him. Surely Jason knew that? It didn’t matter. He hadn’t.

The Red Hood was Jason Todd. Jason Todd was the Red Hood. Bruce had come to view Jason’s grave as a holy place— a shrine to the child that he had been.

He felt it fall out from underneath him. Jason had been gone a long time.

Bruce turned back to the city, away from the empty grave.


End file.
